


three thoughts away from the grave

by miehczyslaw



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Polyamory, fuck 07x04 it still owes me fucking therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miehczyslaw/pseuds/miehczyslaw
Summary: There are origami birds everywhere, flapping their wings and beaks. They follow Freddie to the school and to clubs and to the shed and to the woods and to the lake and to a seaside town who the fuck knows where. Freddie prefers to ignore them most of the time and concentrates on looking at Cook watching her and looking at Effy watching him. He later dreams of poetry. Poetry that pukes all of its letters without shame, and then pukes another little, just for the sake of it.This is not a surprising revelation.
Relationships: Freddie McLair/Effy Stonem, James Cook/Effy Stonem, James Cook/Freddie McLair, James Cook/Freddie McLair/Effy Stonem
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	three thoughts away from the grave

**Author's Note:**

> an attempt was made. :-) its been years and this trio haunts me still
> 
> cw for non-graphic references to canon typical underage make outs &sex and a suicide attempt

**one.**

There’s him being twelve years old, his legs a little too long and the skateboard that Cook gave him for his most recent birthday by saving all of his money for five months in a row lying at Freddie’s feet. There’s Cook’s 3,000-volt smile, too, accompanied by a warning sign in big brass letters and all: “Danger. Stay away. High voltage.” But Freddie has a screwed sense of survival, wow. At least as far as his loved ones are concerned. And they just smoked for the first time, without their parents knowing about it.

All things are kind of funny right now, even danger.

There’s a challenge as well, besides. Or not. A prayer, mostly. A hooligan, “We can’t be almost thirteen and haven’t kissed anyone yet, _that’s unacceptable_ Freds.” JJ has gone home early because he must take his medicine and it’s just the two of them in the shed— except it’s always the three of them, albeit different.

It turns out that Cook has the smile of aspirin not yet consumed but on the verge of. It’s a dangerous smile, Freddie decides. Cook might devour the world with it one day.

(he could also kiss girls with it, girls who obsessively cut out pictures and switch boyfriends-not-boyfriends as fast as panties, girls who break your heart—) but Freddie doesn’t feel like thinking about that, not today, not with Cook looking at him and Cook smiling at him and Cook with an arm around his neck and Cook being a dynamite-boy, waiting for the exact moment when Freddie stops being a coward and dares to light the match that will make everything explode and consume itself. Total confidence. Freddie usually brings the fire extinguisher, not the matches, but hey. Fuck the status quo. Yeah yeah, fuck the future, man.

“It’s just you and me, right?” Cook asks. Though behind his feigned apathy there’s something else, something a little desesperate, maybe, he notes. (Cook’s father has just fled in a boat, abandoning him, and his mother is still like a goat.) It’s similar to when you first ride a skateboard knowing beforehand that you will fall and scrape your knee, but the adrenaline keeps you from giving up. Because you can fly for a couple of minutes, you can learn not to fall again. And Freddie is stubborn and he likes his skateboard, and he likes to fly, _and he likes Cook_.

(he likes him like, a fucking lot.)

“You and me. Sure.” Freddie licks his lips and smiles. “We are super good. Cookie Monster and Fredster united forever and ever, and all that shit.”

“That’s how to talk, yep-yep!” Cook barks out a half-hearted laugh and Freddie decides to stop thinking then.

With his legs a bit too long from the onset of puberty and his heart beating a bit too fast to the rythm of The Police— I loved you since I knew ya I wouldn't talk down to ya— Freddie leans forward and slams his lips against Cook’s, awkwardly.

There are no fireworks or similar bullshit but Cook is enthusiastic and runs his tongue between Freddie’s teeth. (And his hands are restless, barely touching warm skin next to his half-open belt.)

They kiss long and stupid for the rest of the afternoon and the world continues the same but Freddie suddenly feels that he can do anything, even JJ’s magic. Which is dumb, nobody does magic as well as JJ.

 _Because you’re a jerk but for you I would go to the damn end of the earth, and a little more_.

Once upon a time there was Cook’s mouth against his, both flavored with caramel and pepsi.

**two.**

There’s him being sixteen years old, the ghost of his mother haunting him inside a photo while her name is used by Karen on TV in a more vulgar way than her outfits and an Ophelia sunbathing by the lake instead of drowning in it. There’s also Effy’s little ant eyes, they twinkle like wild stars and watch him attentively but always, always from a safe distance, as if he were going to disappear at any moment and she still wanted to imprint his memory behind her cigarrette-ribs even if it will hurt her later.

If there’s one thing that confuses Freddie more than Effy’s mixed signals it’s this. He regards it and it unhinges him a bit, if he’s honest. As much as he thinks about it, it remains absurd.

(because he hasn’t gone anywhere.)

(he _doesn’t plan_ to go anywhere.)

And Freddie could deal with it. Maybe. Eventually. This game of catch me if you can and never leave me, or fail and get off thinking about me for the rest of your life. The problem is that while Effy stays away from Freddie she reaches out and pushes Cook away from him, too.

And Cook— okay, Cook was a dynamite-boy but now he’s a nuclear-man in the making. Sometimes, with increasing frequency, it seems that Cook wishes to die as collateral damage in his own self-destruction. Then Freddie thinks of his mother and the eternal white corridors of the hospital and Karen dressing more and more provocative and his father wearily saying, “you’re a stranger, Frederick” and paper birds sailing on the tiles, and he can’t stand it.

(They end up arguing and what were kisses in a shed turn into fists in the middle of the street.)

JJ despairs and Cook spits daggers and Freddie. Freddie has no regrets. Except. Yes, he has many regrets, what the hell.

Then Effy and Cook fuck each other and then they just fuck _with_ each other, and Freddie mutters soliloquies of love in the quiet of the shed. He doesn’t know to whom of the two they’re dedicated. Maybe a ghost. Not his mother’s, though.

It turns out that Effy is the last note of a song and Freddie wants to sing it all the time. But he also wants Cook back.

And it’s difficult.

It’s _so fucking difficult_.

(Cook makes it difficult, the simple fact of loving him.)

(Effy is a complicated paradigm on her own.)

“Here. A hole that fills mine,” she says one day, mysterious and liquid, outlining his chest on purpose. Freddie feels the air getting heavy in his throat. “And here. A hole that fills yours,” Effy continues, pointing to Cook across the room. Cook with chapped lips and an even more chapped conscience and showing off a black eye, like a medal. “And here... here a hole that fills his,” she concludes, touching her own blouse with disinterest.

There are origami birds everywhere, flapping their wings and beaks. They follow Freddie to the school and to clubs and to the shed and to the woods and to the lake and to a seaside town who the fuck knows where. Freddie prefers to ignore them most of the time and concentrates on looking at Cook watching her and looking at Effy watching him. He later dreams of poetry. Poetry that pukes all of its letters without shame, and then pukes another little, just for the sake of it.

This is not a surprising revelation.

“We’d be a fucking disaster together. The three of us,” Freddie admits, but sounds weak even to his own ears.

 _It’s you and him and me baby, it’ll always be you and him and me_.

Karen watches him askance, with curiousity, and clearly not believing him. She no longer seeks to provoke her respective grief and Freddie loves her, just the same.

“Duh, then why are you always looking at them as if they were your entire universe?”

Meanwhile. Meanwhile Effy and Cook find each other— again and again and— under the rain and inside a closet and on the bench of a park.

And he dies to kiss her. He dies to kiss them both.

(How’s love, uh?)

Freddie ignores the question.

**three.**

There’s him being eighteen years old, the voices that are never silent despite the fact that no one except Effy hears them and a locked door with a baseball bat swinging from side to side, as if omnipotent, approaching Freddie. There’s also a puddle of strawberry milkshake that grows and grows and grows under Effy and her veins blooming in the middle of the floor and his tears soaking through the Shakespearean script until its words are nothing but ink and defeats.

Effy begins therapy and yells at him, “I went crazy while being with you!” and then runs away. Except it’s not Effy _but Elizabeth_.

And since he was twelve Freddie throws down the extinguisher and grabs the matches and sets everything on fire.

And the pain is dull but the ghost of his mother sad, so sad still gives him her condolences.

Running away sounds so tempting now.

Perhaps he manages to understand for the first time the origin of Effy’s fear.

Even with Cook in front of his door carrying Effy unconscious in his arms, and with the memory of a kiss in the middle of the road still biting his hip.

“What are you whining about. _You’ve got me_ , you fucking bastard,” Cook sneers, and somehow he’s burning too, but he’s not turning to ashes. “Me, and Jay-Jay. And _her_. Fuck. You will _always_ have her. So get up and keep fighting Freds, you son of a bitch. Don’t give up.”

“I thought you wanted to fuck the future,” Freddie replies just as irritated, but he hugs him anyway. Because he’s familiar and safe and it’s so damn _easy_. And suddenly breathing no longer burns.

“Fuck the future, man,” Cook nods. “I only care about you guys. One for all and all for one and all that fucking shit forever and ever, you know?”

Freddie knows. Of course _he knows_.

 _The whole world knows their names_ —

So he doesn’t protest when the ambulance takes Effy away and Cook brusquely snatches the matches from his fingers and on a selfish impulse Freddie kisses him, the two of them alone. Cook huffs and as they part, he spits blood on the ground.

“Jesus, Freddie. You’re a savage.”

Freddie smiles back.

“I learned from the best.”

And he stays.

There’s no warning sign in brass letters, this time.

He stays for Effy and for Cook and for kisses in lakes and kisses in sheds and kisses in infirmaries. Little beasts, scraped knees and chewed up makeup and bloody laughter, pieces which fit together perfectly despite being broken long ago.

“You love me. And you love Cook,” Freddie says the next time he visits Effy at the clinic. “And no one is going to blame you more. No one is going to make no one choose anyone more. But for this to work you also need to love yourself Eff.”

Effy squeezes his hand, the bandages on her arm like accusatory, a song in red.

“Okay,” she answers eventually.

And that’s... that’s good.

(They are good. _They can be good_.)

“I’m going to take care of you, Effy,” Freddie says, quietly, against her forehead, before kissing it. “Everything is shit but I’m going to take care of you. We’re going to take care of each other, the three of us.”

And apparently it’s the only thing she needs for her armor to drop.

“I’m sorry,” Effy hiccups. “I’m sorry about everything. Freddie I—”

“It’s fine. Shhh.”

“Cook and you—”

“We won’t go anywhere,” he swears.

“They all promise that,” Effy says, her voice an octave higher and all her teeth showing. But she’s soft around the edges. This is Effy allowing herself to be vulnerable. “And they all lie, in the end.”

Freddie shakes his head. Not quite broken. Not where it matters.

“We could end up surprising you.”

Effy’s smile doesn’t waver.

“I know. I can’t wait for it.”

This is what happens, after:

Freddie yells at John Foster— asking him, _telling him_ — to leave as soon as he arrives in the room.

This is what happens, after:

Cook convinces his mother to fuck the judge as a bribe at his next trial, if only to save her reputation as an artist, and Cook gets his full sentence removed.

This is what happens, after:

Effy is discharged from the clinic and it’s Cook who picks her up. She kisses his cheek, and it feels like forgiveness.

This is what happens, after:

(“I could be the one to break your heart.”

“... Why the fuck would I want that?”)

This is what happens, after:

Effy files a lawsuit against John Foster for inappropriate behavior and questionable methods in his practice as a psychiatrist. Lots of creepy crap worthy of an Alfred Hitchcock movie come out, and Cook breaks Foster’s nose as soon as he’s found guilty. The judge doesn’t intervene.

This is what happens, after:

“You’re brave, Freds.”

(the baseball bat stops moving completely.)

**+four**

Because they are dynamite-kids, not yet nuclear, their bones turn into birds.

(And he lives by kissing her. He lives by kissing them both.)

Once upon a time there were Freddie’s slender fingers cracking Cook and Effy open from the inside out, without anesthesia.


End file.
